Okay.
Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can NOT be happening, this CAN’T be happening.
Okay, okay, okay, find a happy place, okay, find a happy place, find a happy place...
“It’s cold outside, there’s no kind of atmosphere; I’m all alone, more or less, let me fly far away from here...”
Smeg, it’s not working!
“It seems today that all you see is violence in movies and sex on TV, but where are those good old fashioned values on which we used to rely...”
That’s not working either!
I’ve just got to try to avoid thinking about. Try to avoid thinking about the fact that I’m in a town which I’ve been told... I haven’t been told anything about it, so it can’t be good.
Oh smeg, oh smeg, oh smeg...
Gah! Smeg it, Hex, get a hold on yourself! Calm the smeg down! There has to be somepony here, right? It can’t just be that half a pony hanging from a tree, and that-that inanimate zombie slumped on that doorstep.
Wait a sec, it was getting up!
DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE YOU SCUMMY SMEGHEAD DIE!!
Okay, just relax and catch your breath. It’s dead, it’s dead, it’s dead, it’s dead, it’s- THE HEADCRAB’S STILL ALIVE!
How is that even possible?
It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s dead now. Unless a headcrab can survive being impaled on a crowbar, of course, but that’s impossible. Right? Right?
This was all feeling hauntingly familiar. Like my favourite game when I lived on Earth, which I had discovered was actually dimension 33. It must have something to do with resonance or something: two dimensions colliding will start to take on each other’s appearances and physical aspects.
No, just calm down, Hex, calm down...
I am FREAKING out!
Holy smeg, I’ve made a mess. I tried to pick up the zombie’s body and move it somewhere else, but I couldn’t hold it even with my telekinesis. I guess the horn clip thingy gives me enough power to pick up inanimate objects, but not bodies or living creatures. It might penetrate the suppression field, but doesn’t boost magic or anything like that.
That plank wall over there looks awfully fragile. Like, if somepony was to throw a cylinder filled with flammable gas at it, it might just disintegrate.
Like that.
Hey, that wasn’t so bad! Alright, I’ve just had to chuck in another cylinder of gas to take care of the other zombies in there that I didn’t trust even though they were lying around playing dead, but...
Oh smeg.
Those ponies may have been dead, but they certainly weren’t unconscious. One of them was staggering towards me, covered in flames, and it was screaming. This is... This is nightmare fuel! It was horrible on the computer screen, but it’s even worse in real life!
Okay, I need to find a way out of here. There’s no way I can go back the way I came in, so I guess I’ll have to go through... the carpet of dead bodies. Oh smeg, that’s nasty!
Well, at least there’s a buzz saw blade. That could come in handy.
Keep your cool Hex, just keep your cool, there’s no reason for you to- SOMETHING MOVED!
Smeg, smeg, smeg, smeg, smeg... it’s dead. Thank smegging smeg, it’s dead, it’s dead. Chopped clean in half, nerves completely severed, I’d like to see anypony survive that.
Sorry about this. When I freak out I swear. A lot.
All these zombified ponies – none of them have any wings or horns. They’re all earth ponies. Interesting. The Combine usually has three breeds of headcrabs, but I suppose with three breeds of ponies they don’t need them. And anyway, all this stuff was meant for humans: the guns, the armour, the suppression field, all of it.
This place looks like it could have been a timber mill or something, what with all the buzz saw blades and stuff, or maybe a mining town.
Okay, I can get through this. There seem to be plenty of blades and pickaxes and things, so as long as I stay alert I’ll stay alive. I know zombies, and they’re pretty slow and lumbering things so it shouldn’t be too hard to take them down. And the headcrabs can never attack without making a bird-like screeching noise which is very obvious and gives them away.
Hang about.
What’s that thing? I’m outside now, and there’s a cool, pleasant breeze blowing in my face, but there’s this engine thing with a hacksaw blade stuck above it, spinning around like a helicopter rotor.
There’re some zombies coming down some steps to the left. If I crouch under that blade they’ll be chopped to pieces. Gory, but effective.
Ha, I knew it; they don’t even know it’s there!
“Arrgh, these zombies be gettin’ on me nerves! Git offa me poop deck ya lily-livered landlubbers!”
Okay...
So at least I wasn’t the only pony with a heartbeat in this place. Although it sounded like the other occupant was a complete and total nutter. Either that or a senile pirate – my money’s on the first one.
He didn’t sound particularly old, though. Like, late twenties or early thirties maybe. Although he did sound crazy.
Whatever, time to move on.
I avoided the freshly chopped up corpses and crawled towards the steps – I didn’t dare get up until I’d reached them, but I’m still pretty sure I lost a lock of my tail. A headcrab tried to get me, but it jumped straight into the spinning blade.
The doorway ahead was boarded up, but my crowbar made short work of that. I went through and into an alleyway, and took care of a zombie which was coming at me. I grabbed a barrel of flammable stuff (they had them just stacked randomly all over the place, how careless is that?) and it was lucky I did because there was a zombie in the next building, coming at me like they all did for some reason, and when I threw the barrel at it I was almost blown away by the explosive chain reaction.
When I looked inside it was at a scene rated R for mature audiences for violence and gore. Okay? That means I’m not going to describe it!
But there were some undamaged medical supplies and ammunition, which I grabbed gratefully – ignoring the fact that they should have been destroyed by the explosion – and moved on. There was a zombie lying outside the exit which I didn’t trust, so I fired a buzz saw blade into it just to make sure.
“Somepony swab the deck and bring me bottle o’ rum, or I’ll keel haul ye and use ye guts fer garters!”
Thank you, Admiral Pancake.
What? I don’t know what his name is and I have to call him something!
I think I went through the next couple of minutes in a daze, because I can barely remember a thing that happened. All I know is eventually I came to a place where one end of the street was blocked off and the other had a large building with a massive pile of flames in front of it, and there were burning and screaming zombies everywhere.
Nasty.
“Back to hell with you, ye scallywags! The lot of ye belong in Davy Ponies’ locker!”
Good, I could finally see who it was that was doing the talking. As I had thought it was a stallion, probably in his late twenties, but rather than being one solid pastel colour, like just about every other pony I’ve seen, his coat was a patchwork of white and brown. His mane was scruffy, sorta orangey-brown, but I couldn’t make out his eye colour or cutie mark. All I could see was that he was firing a shotgun at the zombies in the street and laughing his flank off.
Then he saw me.
“Arrgh, what have we here?” he asked nopony in particular, and then gave me a wave. “Ahoy there, me hearty! Nice to have fresh meat aboard this vessel! Let’s see if you’re worth yer salt, shall we?” He disappeared back inside the building still laughing.
...Right.
I think I’ll do what I did earlier and fast forward a little. The fear/novelty of being stuck in a zombie-infested town had worn off when I had learned I wasn’t alone, and the most eventful thing the happened was when a headcrab managed to latch on and almost zombified me, but I managed to get it off before it got to me. However, it did manage to tear a nasty gash in my muzzle, but I took care of that with some handy nanites. How they got there I have no idea...
Eventually, after climbing onto a rooftop, I was faced once again by the stranger. He had put on a tri-corner hat and an eye patch, and I could just make out his cutie mark: a compass.
“Wind in yer sails, me hearty!” he cried with a salute. “You’re welcome to make use o’ my traps, long as you stay out of ‘em yerself. Man overboard!”
He fired his shotgun above my head. I heard a screech, and when I looked around I saw a dead headcrab lying behind me.
“In Trottingham, you do well to be vigilant,” he said in a surprisingly solemn voice, and then he turned around and left.
I knew I had important stuff to do – I needed to get out of here and see if Twilight and the Doctor and Spike were okay – but as I pressed onward I couldn’t help but feel sorry for that guy. He must have only been a foal when the Combine invaded. He probably hadn’t even got his cutie mark yet!
I found my thoughts wandering away from me (I always get worried when my mind wanders – I’m afraid it won’t come back) and coming to a rest on the Cutie Mark Crusaders. I didn’t know them very well, but I knew of them. They must be about the same age as that guy now. I wonder if they actually figured out what they should have cutie marks of.
Hmm, this could prove interesting.
I had come to an area with a car blocking my way back out onto the street, but at the pull of a lever it was hoisted into the air, and I could see some zombies wandering towards me.
They were gone at the drop of a car.
Call me sick, if you will, but this was starting to feel rather enjoyable. It was like those zombie games back home where the entire point of it was ploughing through hordes of squishy dead things with a variety of sharp things on the ends of sticks – psychotic, but thrilling.
I took care of some other zombies with another falling car, and climbed up on top of it so that it could hoist me onto a walkway overhead. When I was up, the stranger reappeared.
“Better and better!” he declared, and gave me a salute. “Pipsqueak the Pirate, at your service! I see you’ve already met my... skeleton crew.” He burst into more maniacal laughter.
“Wait a minute!” I called after him. “What’re...?”
But before I could ask him what he was still doing here rather than just finding a way out, he had run away. Seriously, how could anypony in their right mind actually decide to stay in a hellhole like this? It was awful! People play zombie games and stuff where I come from, and they think it would be fun in real life, but then the moment they get there it’s their biggest regret.
Then again, that guy – what did he say his name was? Pipsqueak? That’s rather unfortunate – was obviously not in his right mind.
Okay...
I need a plan. While moving through this place, putting down the ponies that obviously desperately need it, I need to formulate a plan of action.
Right. Top of the list; find a way to meet up with that Pipsqueak bloke, because if the two of us were together then we’d do twice as much damage as we would while separated... I hope. I don’t care much for his mental state, though – there was a pretty good chance he’d go Dick Cheney on me. Not that he could hurt me in this HEV suit, though. He’d probably do some damage with that shotgun, but nothing I couldn’t take care of.
And after that, try to find a way out of this place. With any luck that guy will have been here long enough to know a good escape route.
Then...
What?
Holy smeg, it just hit me. Once I get out, what will I do? The Doctor said to head for the coast, but i on the coast? Where would I meet Twilight? Are they even still alive? Are they dead? Or worse...
Smeg it Hex, get your head in the game! You can destroy that bridge once you’ve crossed it. Focus on there here and the now. Here was a zombie infested town, and now...
Now zombies were flying.
Well, not so much flying as jumping really, really high. I recall the “fast” headcrabs could make a person really agile and fast (hence their name) at the cost of their skin, flesh and internal organs. I guess that rather than using fast headcrabs, it was just headcrabs on pegasi.
I heard a gunshot literally a few metres away from my head.
“Ah, it’s you, me hearty!” Pipsqueak. Who else? “Aye, these streets be tough, my apologies fer nearly spreadin’ yer brains ‘cross the pavement. And all the foals at school called me crazy!”
“I wonder why,” I muttered, and thankfully he didn’t hear me.
“Catch!”
Thanks for the warning, that shotgun almost hit me on the head. But thanks anyway, even though you have all the sanity of a box of frogs in a bag of cats which has been tied up and thrown into a river.
“Hit ‘em in the head!” Pipsqueak advised.
“Um...” I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Thanks.”
“You are most welcome, but hush! They come! There is no rest in Trottingham. Move on, me hearty, and I shall meet you at the tavern on the green!”
Okay, so now we have a rendezvous point arranged. I just have to find this ‘tavern on the green’ and meet this loony before we both go the same way as Thomas and Martha Wayne.
What? Too soon? I’m allowed to make pop culture references if I want to, and I don’t see any lawyers leaping to attention to stop me. They did it all the time in dimension 80 and no-one cared a bit, but then again there was a baby with an IQ of three hundred or so who was friends with a dog which walked on its hind legs and drank martinis (and was a smegging awful writer). There, see? I just made another. Points to anypony who gets it.
Maybe I should think about something other than the fact that I could be torn to pieces at any second. How does that song go again?
Drugs, gimme drugs, gimme drugs, I don’t need it but I’ll sell what you got, take the cash and I’ll eat it, eight legs to the wall, HIT THE GAS kill ‘em all and we crawl and we crawl and we crawl GIMME MORE DETONATOR. Love, gimme love, gimme love, I don’t need it but I’ll take what I want from your heart and I’ll keep it in a bag (in a box) put an X on the floor, gimme MORE, gimme MORE, gimme more SHUT UP AND SING IT WITH ME!!
From mall security to every enemy, we’re on your property STANDING IN V FORMATION. Let’s blow an artery, eat plastic surgery, with no apology GIVE US MORE DETONATION!!
More, gimme more, gimme more!
Well, let me tell you ‘bout the sad mare. Shut up and let me see your jazz hands! Remember when you were a madmare? Thought you was Batmare? And hit the party with the gas can KISS ME YOU ANIMAL.
You run the company, @#$% like a Kennedy, I think we’d rather be burning your information. Let’s blow an artery, eat plastic surgery, with no apology – give us more detonation-
And right here, right now, all the way in Battery City, little foals raise their open filthy hooves like tiny daggers up to heaven. And all the juvie halls, and the Ritalin rats, as angels made of neon and @#$%ing garbage SCREAM OUT “What will save us?” And the sky opened up – everypony wants to change the world, everypony wants to change the world but no-one, no-one wants to die – wanna try, wanna try, come on let me see you die, see you die, see I’LL BE YOUR DETONATOR!
Guitar solo! This is making the situation a lot more fun than it was.
Make no apology: it’s death or victory on my authority, crash and burn, young and loaded. Drop like a bullet shell, dress like a sleeper cell, I’d rather go to hell than be in purgatory. Cut my hair, gag and bore me. Pull this pin; let this world ex-PLODE.
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! Kicking zombie ass to Killjoys, BITCH!
Well, that was fun.
“Ahoy, matey!” Okay, how is he doing that? I’m pretty sure I’m moving faster than he is, and yet he’s still ahead of me. “Ye be headin’ fer port when ye need be headin’ starboard! Git yer sails hoisted right, me laddie!”
What? I’m going the wrong smegging way? But it was so awesome getting here! Okay, I’m gonna fast forward a little more to the point where I found myself on a rooftop, looking down at what appeared to be a pub surrounded by a tall chain link fence. There was a small cable car on the far side which led to my rooftop, and Pipsqueak was waving at me.
“Ah, there ye be!” he shouted. Honestly, that pirate speak was starting to get on my nerves. “I’ll be sendin’ ye the cart so’s ye can join me! Keep yerself save while it goes!”
He pulled on a lever and the cable car started slowly making its way up the cable towards me. Seriously, if it was going any slower it would be going backwards.
Oh. Did I mention that there were drain pipes on either side of the roof I was on and bands of pegasus zombies heading my way? Yeah, I probably should have because now I was not only waiting for a cable car which was slower than a slug with a broken foot, but I was also defending myself against these.
It was almost like a twisted, sadistic spin on Whack-A-Mole – I had to run from pipe to pipe, gunning down the zombies as they tried to climb up.
“Almost there!”
“Could it go any slower?” I asked myself as I put down another monster.
I think this must have gone on for about five full minutes – or five hours, I wasn’t really counting – but eventually:
“Now, mate! Release the handbrake and join the crew!”
“FINALLY!” I couldn’t help but shout. I leapt into the cart and started sliding down the cable. Surprise, surprise, it went down faster than it came up. It may have been my added weight making it slide faster than it would have done otherwise, but it was still rather annoying. It was like the car had a mind of its own, and it didn’t want to give me a lift so it decided to take as long as possible coming in the hopes that I would suffer unjust execution by zombie before it got to me, and now that it was carrying me it wanted to get me off as quickly as possible.
When it eventually stopped it was at the roof of the pub, and I descended a ladder on the wall and was finally faced with the insane pirate wannabe.
I had been right – he was pretty young.
“So, we meet at last, me hearty,” he said. “Ye deserve extra gruel fer avoidin’ me traps.”
“Well, this whole day has been nothing but gruelling,” I commented. “I just want to get the smeg out of here. But-but why are you here? There must be loads of ways out, why did you decide to stay?”
“A shepherd must tend to his flock,” said Pipsqueak, “especially when they become unruly. I shall show you to the mines – they are the most direct route to the outside. Follow me.”
As he spoke I reloaded my guns and picked up some extra ammo, and once I was done I started to follow him around the back of the pub when he suddenly whipped around with a manic look in his eye.
“BUT follow only if ye be a stallion o’ valour!” he growled. “For the path to the mines is guarded by monsters so foul, so cruel, that nopony has ever duelled with them and LIVED!! Bones of four-fifty ponies lay strewn about their lair, so if you do doubt your courage DEATH awaits you, with nasty big pointy teeth!” He made a motion as if scratching at the air.
Eccentric performance.
He led me around the back, up a plank and over a bent chain link fence, and we started moving through a gully towards a graveyard, and I swear we hadn’t gone five centimetres before zombies leapt down from above and started attacking us.
And once we got to the graveyard there were all three kinds of zombies lumbering towards us: the ordinary earth pony zombies, the fast pegasus zombies, and a couple of the ones which had headcrabs crawling all over them which I presumed were the unicorns. Or had been unicorns.
Nasty.
There were plenty of buzz saw blades and cinder blocks lying around (for some weird reason) so I never ran out of stuff to throw. I’ll even admit that it was fun in a psychotic kind of way. What rather spoiled is was that the entire time we were fighting, cutting through the half-rotted hordes like a hot knife through butter – that Pipsqueak bloke would not stop laughing. It was borderline disturbing.
The most memorable part of the battle was when we stood on a concreted area, raised above the ground and surrounded by a wrought iron fence, and I fired a shot into a gas canister which left us surrounded by roaring flames: obviously there was a leaking pipeline somewhere near here.
And the zombies and headcrabs, ever ignorant, still tried to get at us and died screaming in flames.
Again, nasty.
I am not at all proud of anything I did that night. At least it wouldn’t be night for much longer, because I could see the sky turning purple around the edges. Everything is less scary in daylight. Haven’t you found that to be true?
Once the flames died down Pipsqueak and I galloped over to a mausoleum, and the crazy stallion pulled on a rope and a gate opened behind me. It was raised vertically, and obviously couldn’t be held open for very long.
“Hurry!” Pipsqueak shouted. “Go while I hold the gate!”
I slid under the gate and it slammed closed behind me, cutting a headcrab clean in half.
“Farewell, me hearty!” Pipsqueak gave me a cheery wave as he unloaded his shotgun into another zombie’s head. “May the Black Spot never stain your coat! GOODBYE!” And with a final maniacal laugh he set the ground ablaze and ran into the mausoleum, firing his shotgun like no tomorrow.
“Thank you!” I shouted. “Thank you for everything.”
What an interesting stallion. Completely out of his mind, but that was justified in that everything he’d ever known had obviously been destroyed. All over Trottingham I had seen these massive hunks of metal – the same kind of shells that had destroyed that station in City 17. At least I know how the headcrabs got there.
But that didn’t explain how it had got so... out of hand (out of hoof?). That place was infested beyond belief!
And I don’t trust this. At the entrance to the mines I had found a flammable barrel (again, they’re all over the place! It’s just plain careless) and I threw it down the shaft just in case. Then, because of the distinct lack of lift, I had to jump from support strut to support strut until I got to a cavern at the bottom and jumped down onto a catwalk.
The floor was crawling with headcrabs. Lucky I’d picked up some extra grenades, I needed them.
Hmm, I wonder... There’s a tunnel over there which looks free of headcrabs.
This wasn’t going to be easy.
I concentrated on pouring every drop of magic I had into my horn, levitating not any object but my own body. I strained and felt sweat pouring off my forehead in buckets as I drifted slowly towards the beams which supported the tunnel roof.
Made it! And now I collapse like this because that was the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done.
I can’t be bothered to get up, so I think I’m just going to roll through this tunnel until I get my strength back. Yeah, roll like a log – that sounds incredibly immature, but I’m smegged if I’m gonna drag myself across the floor like my legs don’t work. Which they don’t at the moment, but that’s beside the point.
Ah, a flooded pit. Gonna have to swim this one. It looks like it’ll be hard to see, but if the name of the game is freedom then it’ll be well worth it.
Here I go!
Smeg, it’s dark down here. I can hardly see my own hooves in front of my face, and it’s pretty hard to hold my breath while holding this crowbar in my mouth, but I don’t have anywhere else to put it, and I’m sure as hay not sticking it up my arse.
Oh smeg...
I need to breathe!
Thank god this is an old mine, and there are still plenty of vertical shafts with loads of air in them. This one will have to do, even if there’s a barnacle hanging from the ceiling with its icky tongue dangling right next to me.
Right, here we go again.
Again, this water is disgustingly murky, and I have to suck on my crowbar to avoid having my mouth open. Not pleasant!
Ah, finally, a way out. And there’s a fire, which means light!
Why does swimming have to be so smegging exhausting?
I rounded a corner, and saw a long diagonal mine shaft (with little hollow bits carved into the sides) with a mine cart sitting on a rail at this end. The cart was connected to some kind of pulley system, and sitting in it was another one of those engine helicopter-blade spinny things.
There was also a lever.
I see how this works. I pull the lever, the spinny thing goes up to the top of the shaft and back again, slicing any unsuspecting zombies in half, and I get up safely by going into the hollow bits (or just ducking) when the spinny thing goes past. Easy enough.
And there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Literally!
Unless I’m dead, but I’m pretty sure I would know if I was dead. Everyone knows when they’re dead, right?
Right?
That spinny thing just grazed the tip of my horn, and it hurt.
I’m not dead. That’s a relief.
Yup, as long as I crawl like a worm up the entire length of the shaft, I should be okay. Ew, look at those zombies getting sliced! That’s gross but satisfying at the same time, it’s weird.
Here we are, right at the top. And there’s a group of zombies obviously too smart to fall for the spinny thing. A few shotgun blasts and they were taken care of.
There was also a headcrab waiting for me outside, but I soon took care of that.
I never thought I would be so happy to see the sun in my entire life. For several minutes I did nothing but lie on the cold concrete and let the light warm my face, metaphorically washing away the horror of the past few hours. I could seriously have fallen asleep right then and there, because I’d been awake for eighteen full hours and I was so, so tired...
...but I had to get up. I’d have bet anything that Twilight needed my help.
Question is; where the smeg am I? There’s a railway track, and some freighters just sitting there, so it’s obviously not in use, but is this City 17 or what? The air tastes kinda salty – I must be near the coast.
I started to make my way down the tracks in the confidence that-
What was that?
Sounded like a gunshot.
And is that a laser up ahead? Dear sweet smeg, it’s a sniper!
It’s okay, I’ve got grenades, so I can take care of this. All I have to do is throw one into the window the sniper’s shooting out of and I’ll be on my way.
Like that, see? Easy peasy one-two-threesy.
Unless of course there’s another one on another bridge up ahead which is facing the other way and therefore has a clear shot. That one almost hit me in the nose, for crying out loud! Take that, you son of a parasprite!
Yeah, you take that. And you make the most of it while it lasts, you bloody smegging bastard.
Oh smeg, that looks nasty. There’s a train carriage blocking my path, and the flickering of the light behinds it suggests that there’s fire, plus I can hear gunshots which by the sounds of it are coming from machine guns AND shotguns.
I entered it in pretty much the same way I had entered the carriage which had contained Big Macintosh and his demon dog friend, but rather than a scrap yard it was a warzone on the other side. At first I thought it was another CP vs. Resistance battle, but these guys were gunning down zombies and they weren’t CP. Their armour was completely black except for the eyes, which were glowing either blue or orange, and their uniforms declared that they were Overwatch.
Smeg I hate the Combine. The Overwatch are so much tougher than the CPs, and they have better weaponry as well. HEY! YOU! DIE!
There, now he’s dead I can take his weapon, and it’s a real machine gun as well. Plus it looks like it can fire those energy ball thingies. Sweet! But they can’t hold as much ammo as the SMG... oh well.
Just as the mines had been crawling with headcrabs, so was this tunnel crawling with Overwatch. Deep down they might still have been ponies – innocent ponies who’d had this horrible thing done to them to make them evil – but that part was buried deeper than the centre of the Earth, and you can’t get much deeper than that, can you?
The tunnel emerged into a train yard with another warehouse nearby, and again there were Overwatch all over the place. I was pretty quick in taking care of them, but it sounded like somepony else might need my help.
Inside the warehouse was another battle, but this one was between a squad of Combine soldiers and three young mares who appeared to be about the same age as Pipsqueak. And they were losing.
One of them, an orange pegasus, cried out in pain and clutched her side. While her two friends (a white unicorn and a yellow earth pony) rushed to her aid, I gunned down the rest of the Overwatch and tried to catch my breath. What? Adrenaline can leave you panting, okay?
“Scoots, are you okay?” asked the unicorn.
“Am I okay?” the pegasus asked sarcastically. “I’ve just been shot in the wing and you’re asking if I’m okay? Of course I’m not okay! I’m in massive amounts of pain, if that’s what you mean!”
“Okay, just calm down, Scootaloo,” said the earth pony with a familiar accent. “We’ll get you to the infirmary and they can patch you up.”
“Let’s hope so,” said Scootaloo, “because if they can’t, somepony’s getting shot over this.”
“Hang on,” said the unicorn when she saw me for the first time. “Who are you?”
“Well,” I said, “you see, I’m, er-”
“HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEXXXXXXXXXXXX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
The shout continued long after I was bowelled over by a pony-sized ball of vibrant pink energy which could only mean one thing.
“Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh I can’t believe you’re BACK! Everypony who was anypony was sooo so sad when we thought you were dead but now you’re not dead and you’re okay and now you’re back in Equestria! And everypony’s calling you the One Free Stallion and Trixie is sooo so mad that you’re taking out so many of the Overwatch and the Civil Protection which is good because they’re really mean but I’m glad you haven’t taken out Lightning Strike because he isn’t mean at all! And oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh I’m just so happy I can’t believe you’re finally back and now we can have a PARTY!!”
“Pinkie!” I interrupted before my brain exploded. “I’m really glad I’m back too.” And I stood up so that I could give her a proper hug. She squeezed me a little tighter than I would have preferred, but I didn’t mind because I was just glad to be alive.
“Did you have to go through Trottingham?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, and I explained about the zombie infestation and Pipsqueak the Pirate.
“Oh my gosh, that poor stallion!” she cried when I was done. “And I expect everybrony wanted Pipsqueak to be in the previous story, but the author decided not to include him so that he could replace Father Grigori, which was a position she was considering giving to Gilda but Pipsqueak seemed to make more sense and presented the possibility of Trottingham replacing Ravenholm.”
What. The smeg.
It’s Pinkie Pie. Duh! And the whole concept of Trottingham had seemed rather recycled, come to think of it... but that was irrelevant right now.
“Apple Bloom, is everything okay?” Pinkie asked somepony else.
“Scootaloo got hit in the wing,” said the earth pony who was apparently Apple Bloom, “but apart from that we ain’t got no casualties.”
“Great!” said Pinkie, and then she turned to me and said “Twilight’s been calling for like, the past ages and she said you were back but I didn’t want to believe her but-”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted her again. “Twilight’s been calling?”
“Yeah, for like, the past hour!” said Pinkie. “And she’s been really worried about you, but the reception’s being naughty and Twist’s trying to sort it out. Shall we go and see if it’s fixed?”
“And talk to Twilight?” Of course I wanted to see if it was fixed!
So Pinkie led me (bouncing, of course) to the back of the warehouse, where there was a concreted room filled with injured ponies lying on bedrolls. And every single one must have been a school foal when the Combine invaded. I realise now that the white unicorn who had been fighting with Apple Bloom and Scootaloo was Sweetie Belle, and that they were the Cutie Mark Crusaders – emphasis on were.
Pinkie knocked on a door, and it was opened by a cream coloured mare with glasses and an incredibly bushy red mane.
“Hi Twist!” Pinkie chirped. “Any luck with the reception?”
“Yeth, it’th cleared up,” Twist lisped (rather unfortunate in my opinion), “but it’th not good newth. Twilight thayth... Twilight thayth the Doctor’th been captured.”
“Oh, that’s not good,” said Pinkie.
“Is Twilight there, can I talk to her?” I asked.
“Thure,” said Twist, and she walked out past me and Pinkie as we entered the next room.
There was an old radio sitting next to a very static-y TV set, displaying the worried face of Twilight Sparkle. There were also some crates off to the side which appeared to contain extra ammo and health stuff, but that’s irrelevant right now.
“Hey Twilight!” Pinkie squeaked. “Guess who just came from the train yard!”
“Hex, you’re alright!” Twilight sounded and looked both overjoyed and relieved at the same time. “You made it through Trottingham, thank Celestia. Listen, I need your help – the Combine’s captured the Doctor and they’ve taken him to Nova Discord.”
“I know what both those words mean,” I said, “so the name is literally ‘new chaos’. Not good, am I right?”
“You’re extremely right,” said Twilight. “It used to be a high security prison, but it’s something a lot worse now. It’s also on a cliff, so I’m afraid you’re going to have to get there via the coast road.”
“The coast road?” said Pinkie. “Have you gone loco in the coco, Twilight? It’s spawning season for the antlions! Ever since those things crossed over from the other dimension they’ve been nothing but trouble. Not even Fluttershy likes them very much!”
“I know, Pinkie,” Twilight replied, “which is why I want you to lend Hex the rover. You know, the one the Doctor fitted with a tau cannon just in case?”
“Okie dokie lokie!” Pinkie chirped, and pressed a button on the radio and said “Dinky, could you get the guys to bring out the buggy? Hex is gonna be driving it.”
“Will do,” said a feminine voice on the other end.
“Hex,” Twilight addressed me directly, “I haven’t driven the coast road in over a year, but I doubt it’s got any safer in that time. I’ll meet you at Nova Discord. And... be careful.”
“Don’t worry,” I said in what I hoped was a reassuring voice, “I made it through a zombie infested town, I can make it to Nova Discord. I’ll see you when I see you.” And with that, I reached forward and turned the television off.